Biden sees Obama winning, GOP 'fever' breaking

11/4/12 5:47 PM EST

Vice President Joe Biden is confident that he and President Obama will pull out a decisive win on Tuesday, and is already talking to Republicans about collaborating during a second term, he said Sunday.

"I've already -- I'm not gonna tell you who -- I've already been talking," Biden said in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews taped earlier in the day in the Cleveland suburb of Lakeview, Ohio. "We need leaders that can control their party, and I think you're gonna see the fever break."

Obama has expressed a similar sentiment -- hopeful that the end of the campaign will be the start of an era of bipartisanship.

And, on the campaign trail in recent days, Biden has been talking up the bipartisan cooperation he's seen since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast and noting it reminds him of the across-the-aisle work he did with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retiring Sens. Olympia Snowe and Dick Lugar, and former Sens. Bob Dole, Chuck Hagel and Alan Simpson.

"There's still some solid, Republican conservatives who understand what principled compromise means and are not wrapped up in ideological purity," Biden said.

"I could name for you -- I think there's a dozen Republican senators, and I think I can name you two-and-a-half, three dozen Republican House members who, once this election is over, they kind of get a get out of jail free card."

Once Obama has been reelected, those Republicans are going to stop obstructing the president, Biden said.

"They're gonna start saying, 'Hey, man, I no longer have an obligation to stick with the right of my party to say we're going to defeat this guy.' He's there four more years. It's done, it's over, let's get something done."

And, unsurprisingly, Biden is confident that he and Obama will win.

"I don’t think it is going to be close in the Electoral College," he said. "I think we are going to win clearly."

Biden is confident that they will win Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Hampshire. He's less optimistic about some other battlegrounds: "I think we got an even chance of winning Virginia and Florida." He didn't, though, mention Colorado -- where he campaigned on Saturday -- or North Carolina.

As he often does, Biden also talked up the president's strengths that he's observed during nearly four years in the White House.

Obama is "cool" under pressure, Biden said. "Literally, I've never once seen this guy falter. I''ve never -- he's never once in my presence said, 'Joe, what do you think the politics of this are?'"

"He cuts through all the malarkey," the vice president added, using a word that's become commonplace in his stump speech since he used it during his debate against Paul Ryan.

"Now that he's mastered the bureaucracy," Obama can be effective, Biden said, citing the president's insistence that the Pentagon send power generators to Con Edison even after a principal complained it would be difficult to work with the company. "He just cuts through."